SWAT teams arrest suspect in 4 Fla. killings, missing boy found safe

Police said they took Adam Matos into custody at the Floridian Palace Hotel and multiple charges are pending. The missing child, Ismael Tristan Santisteban, was with him.

ByTamara Lush, Associated PressSeptember 5, 2014

Adam Matos is shown in this undated booking photo provided by Pasco County Sheriff's Office, in New Port Richey, Florida, September 5. Matos was arrested early Friday holed up in a downtown Tampa, Florida hotel room after being sought in connection with four murders and the disappearance of a four-year-old boy in nearby Hudson, Florida.

HUDSON, Fla. — SWAT teams swarmed a downtown Tampa hotel early Friday, arresting a suspect in the killing of four people whose bodies were found piled on top of each other and being circled by birds. A 4-year-old autistic boy believed to be the man's son was found safe at the hotel, Tampa police said.

Police said they took Adam Matos, 28, into custody at the Floridian Palace Hotel and multiple charges are pending. The child, Ismael Tristan Santisteban, was with him.

A tip led multiple law enforcement agencies to the Floridian, a recently reopened landmark hotel in downtown Tampa across the street from the federal courthouse.

The Tampa Tribune reports police used a ruse to lure Matos out of his room and away from the child. Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said Matos was caught by surprise and didn't put up a fight. Matos was in Tampa with plans to leave the area with the boy, Nocco said.

The sheriff's office worked with Tampa police to devise "a plan so this would end safely," Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor said.

Castor said the child seemed fine. "He is in good spirits," she said during a news conference Friday morning.

Castor said that she did not know whether a weapon was found in the room. But she said Pasco investigators were attempting to get a search warrant for the hotel room.

The search for Matos and the boy began Thursday after Sheriff's deputies in nearby Pasco County conducted a welfare check at a Hudson home. The deputies who stopped by the home found no one home, but noticed a bad odor in the area. They walked down the street toward an area where birds were circling and found four bodies — two men and two women — piled on top of each other. He said they had apparently been there for several days.

Nocco said the scene inside the home alarmed investigators.

Matos quickly became a suspect. He had been seen in the area recently and Nocco said the killings were not a random act.

While at the Tampa hotel, Castor said Matos used his own name to check into the hotel around midnight and he had gone to a bus station near the hotel to ask about routes and bus fares.

Nocco said Matos is either the boy's biological father or a father figure to him. The boy had last been seen at his Pasco County home Aug. 28. He said the boy's mother called the sheriff's office that day and said Matos had threatened her with a knife.

Officials have not released the names of the victims or said how they may be related to the boy and to Matos.